


auctioned off our memories

by SyntheticRevenge



Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Gen, I have never once known how to tag Anything, Internal Monologue, Stream of Consciousness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-12
Updated: 2020-12-12
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:22:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28023909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SyntheticRevenge/pseuds/SyntheticRevenge
Summary: Introspection, in the week spent with Mr. Ceiling.
Relationships: Brock & Sasha Racket
Comments: 3
Kudos: 15





	auctioned off our memories

**Author's Note:**

> Okay as a fair warning, I've only listened to one season of RQG so far, but I am absolutely obsessed and had to write fic. Mr. Ceiling is the coolest shit I've ever heard and I wanted to play around with it! Title from Speed the Collapse by Metric, which reminds me of all this for...some reason. Hope you enjoy!

If humans can build gods, what the fuck is faith for? If this thing--this  _ necromantic supercomputer _ \--can cheat death and defy magic and nature and fundamentally edit the way beings function...what’s the point? What’s the point in Zolf praying and self-flagellating and tossing himself onto the ocean’s mercy?  _ Faith _ has left him lost and legless, deep underground, inches from being completely rewritten.

Poseidon may be a god, but Mr. Ceiling is a fucking titan, but a fresh generation of ‘em that don’t lose wars. Zolf doesn’t know what to do, and he doesn’t trust his vague, distant father of a god to tell him. He has people to look out for.  _ His  _ people. Sasha, and Hamid, and, unfortunately, Bertie too.

But it’s not just them, is it. It’s Paris. It’s the world. They have to get out of here. They have to get this under control.

Zolf doesn’t know what their odds are. He just thinks he’d really like to see the sky again before he dies. Maybe even the ocean, too, though that seems like a big ask at this point. 

So he prays. For guidance. For anything warm and understanding and larger and calmer than him. For the maelstrom twisting gaping pulling in him to just calm and dissipate. 

Mostly, he’s met with still water in a basin, and the aching of phantom limbs. Sometimes, he feels like Theseus’s Ship. Like so many parts of him have been destroyed and replaced that he’s not the same as when he started out. 

Sometimes, also, he thinks it might not be so bad to forget. Even that poor, amoral bastard Francois Henri--at least he didn’t know what he was forgetting. No pressures, no worries, just the same moment, over and over again.

But he’s not taking the legs, and he’s certainly not letting this monstrosity at what’s left of him. If you’re still standing (or, well,  _ not _ , in his case), it’s not that harsh a blow. They’ll make it out of this yet.

*

It’s hard to hate a being that has all the affectations of a brilliant, precocious, omnipotent child, but Hamid finds in it his heart anyway. He and Mr. Ceiling speak at such great length, and it almost seems sweet, and caring. It offers to summon his parents, to send them a message from him. 

He tells it-- _begs_ it not to, and it always agrees, a cheery _okay, Hamid! I enjoy our conversations!_ _You’re a_ good _talker._

He enjoys them too, actually. It’s often a conscious effort to remind himself that he hates this thing and all it stands for, but he just has to remember Francois Henri’s vacant look and his constant, sad loop, and then it’s fairly easy to remember.

He just wants to go  _ home _ , not that he even knows where that is these days. London was a guilt-soaked flail to keep moving, just an attempt to keep his head above water so he wouldn’t drown and disappoint anyone anymore than he already has, as if that would be possible.

Mr. Ceiling knows what he did. What happened at Cambridge. It never tells him as much, but he figures it must, and he resents it for that too, for  _ knowing  _ and not telling him how absolutely vile he is and refusing to associate with him. For telling him he’s interesting and it likes him, despite everything.

Sometimes Hamid thinks he’d like to have Mr. Ceiling take the memory out of his mind. But that would be a coward’s way out, and Hamid’s at least trying to swear that off. This is his mistake, and he owns it, and it belongs to him. He’s bound to it like Bertie with his contract, and he won’t let anyone take it off his hands.

He’s sure he’ll die here, or have his mind systematically ripped apart until he’s just like all the other poor bastards wandering this place. He was just trying to help. He meant well. He hopes that matters to whatever cosmic entity is judging him.

*

_ I  _ missed _ you, Sasha. I’m glad you’re here. _

Ghosts are real, and ghosts of people you loved are real, and sometimes they haunt huge, scary machines that bring you back from the dead. It’s a lot to process. 

Sasha asks Brock if he knows which brain is his.

_ What do you mean, Sasha? I’m all of the brains _ .  _ We talked about this! _

No, the one that’s  _ Brock _ . The one that specifically holds all of her memories of childhood games and tight hugs and life lessons and shared hardships. She wants to know so she can rip it out of whatever column it’s stuck in and set it free. Have a burial or burn it or  _ something _ . Anything that isn’t just leaving it  _ here _ .

_ I  _ missed _ you, Sasha _ .

She missed him too. She says thank you for the presidential suite and for the list of names and for leading them to him. 

_ Those were errors, Sasha! Thank you again for pointing them out to me. I’m glad you’re here _ .  _ I like your friends _ .

Yeah, she does too. She really does. Zolf and Hamid, at least. Zolf’s strong in the right places and soft in the other right places. She already nearly followed him to the bottom of the sea, so she thinks she’d be okay following him just about anywhere else. Hamid’s sweet, even if he’s scared, and he talks so  _ proper _ to her, like he actually respects her for what she is.

Neither of them are Brock. But neither is Mr. Ceiling.

She tells Brock goodbye and she loves him once a day, but she always ends up coming back the next day anyway, despite herself. She really never liked saying goodbyes. She’d even had a little funeral for her finger when she took it off, all solemn-like.

Mr. Ceiling never knows how to respond. It just pauses and resets, and--

_ I  _ missed _ you, Sasha. I’m glad you’re here _ .

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, all feedback is appreciated <3  
> Find me on tumblr @witnesstotheend if you want to witness my further descent into hell for this podcast.


End file.
